


Tell me how you really feel.

by IlluminateTheSkyline



Category: Clique, Fandom - Fandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: I Don't Even Know, M/M, Sad, building, i cant tag oh no, i didnt ask him, i dont know if hes sad, is it sad, josh is there, just read it, oh no i feel like im on instagram help, stars?, tyler is sad, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 16:47:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IlluminateTheSkyline/pseuds/IlluminateTheSkyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘’No, tell me how you really feel.’’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell me how you really feel.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 4 a.m the other day when I should have been updating my other fanfic but I wasn't feeling inspired so I wrote this instead. Some bits I think are alright but to be honest- it kinda sucks. Just a warning. I'm not sure if the beginning and end actually work if you get what I mean. Ha, I don't even know what I mean. ANYWAYS, HERE.. (also lol everything I write is so short I am so sorry I am the literal worst omg)

He had never been the kind of guy that everyone went out of their way to talk to.  
No one had ever asked about his feelings in the way sad people in the countless romantic novels he’d collected over the years all seemed to be asked.  
All ‘are you really alright’ or ’I know you’re not really okay’.  
He wasn’t used to people digging underneath his skin, peeling away the raw muscle in an attempt at reaching the very soul within him.  
Usually, people are so wrapped up in their own lives, the phrases become monotone.  
‘How are you’ is never intended as a genuine way to address your concern- at least not anymore.  
Now it was less of a question, and more like an obligation.  
The truth is, Tyler had no idea how you were even meant to answer those questions, when the only one he’d ever been asked was a ‘how are you?’ in passing.  
Those three words could never hold the possibility of a person being prepared to receive any answer other than ‘good, yourself?’ or ‘yeah, not bad’ or at the very worst ‘I’m hanging in there’. Because when you are asked such a question in passing, and that is the key part in all of this, it does not mean what it seems to.  
Every single time Tyler remembers being asked that particular question, the memory appears alongside images of distant, unfocused eyes, the ticking of a wristwatch, and the feeling of pressure and paralysis of lungs which slowly stop their hopeless fluttering, flailing panic and accept their numbing death.

So when he was being asked this question on a Thursday night by eager, desperate eyes, bare wrists reaching out for his own, naturally he didn’t understand how to respond and the same pressure and paralysis repeatedly threatened to stop his heart from beating as he uttered the two words ‘’Yeah, you?’’  
Two eager desperate eyes blinked in.. something that looked like devastation, and the steady arms he now felt on his own attempted to ground his swaying mind and form.  
Looking down to city lights below, all burning like fallen stars, the metropolis a beautiful, vibrant, irresistible constellation, Tyler took a step further away from the man behind him, and a step closer to where his dreams all littered the pavement below in form of fast cars, and rushing lorries.  
Make a wish on a shooting star.  
Tyler had never seen one of those.  
He had never looked up at the right moment.  
He had never had the luck to see anything he could equate to some kind of a purpose.  
He couldn’t find any kind of a purpose looking up.  
So he stopped looking up.  
He started looking down.  
Making a wish on a crashing car had to be close enough, right?  
It was definitely close enough, he thought as his foot shuffled further forward to freedom.

‘’No, tell me how you really feel.’’  
Tyler’s body whipped round so fast he lost his clumsy footing, and if it weren’t for the stranger’s hand seemingly surgically attached to his own forearm, he’d be a goner for sure.  
He wasn’t sure if that meant he owed the man a thank you, though.  
He hadn’t decided yet.  
Brow crinkled together in pain-filled confusion, glazed over weary eyes held within them a tiny spark of hope, and longing, he stared back at the curly haired human stood with fierce determination, and fear of destruction in his own reflective eyes.  
‘’What?’’  
His voice cracked between the letters, the sounds aching as they were formed in two parts, and then lingered in the bitter, summer air for a moment before they were met with another confused, yet agonisingly sympathetic response.  
‘’I found you staring over the roof of a twenty storey apartment building, at 2 A.M on a Thursday night, all alone. I know that you’re not alright. I’ve had a lot of experience with a lot of different people in my lifetime, and kid, let me tell you this- People don’t tend to end up staring over the roof of a twenty storey apartment building, at 2 A.M on a Thursday night, all alone unless there’s something up, so I’m not gonna accept that you’re just ‘okay’ and that this situation is ‘okay’ because it isn’t.  
You shouldn’t be stood here, being talked off a ledge by a randomer right now.  
So tell me why you’re here.  
Tell me what happened.  
In your day, your month, year- heck- you can tell me your entire life story, and I promise to listen to every word.  
Just come with me, and you can tell me everything.  
No judgement, no catch, no.. ulterior motive..’’  
With those last words he threw his hands up, a gentle smile stretching across his face, yet somehow still maintaining the sincerity and understanding in his eyes.

And what was Tyler supposed to do?  
Here he was, seconds away from becoming a fallen star, only a moment out of reach was the possibility of living inside an astronomic dream.  
Tyler stepped away from the pulsars and quasars calling out his name in bright lines of energy and soundwaves, and turned his back to the dreamworld behind him, silently letting it go.  
The first thing he sees when he turns around is the man’s smile again, friendly and reassuring as ever, care etched onto every line of his face, illuminated by the knowing glow of the moon, and in that moment Tyler swears to himself that he’ll be alright for one more night.  
Because the other man was taking his hand once more, but instead of it being frantic and afraid and worried, it was soft and gentle.  
His hand felt like the lullabies his mother would sing to him as a young child.  
It was a simple comfort.

And how could he not believe he was going to be alright when the stars had all aligned so perfectly, so intricately as to make it possible for both of the men to be alive at exactly the same time, in the same place, knowing exactly the right words to say to give despair a slight hint of hope.  
The way their intertwined hands were just like those two long-lost puzzle pieces that finally fit.  
It just can’t have been coincidental.  
For the first time since back when he was still a child with faith and belief and trust, gazing up to a paint spattered sky where he would only see opportunity within black spaces left completely undiscovered between the specks of silver and white, Tyler looked up.

Tyler looked up, and promised himself that he would never look down again.


End file.
